Hatchet job done on party traditions

At some point late on Wednesday night,
Julia Gillard
’s tight-knit, long-standing group of parliamentary friends was roped into calling other MPs, seeking votes in the leadership ballot expected to be held yesterday morning.

The idea, said one source, was to overcome “some of the revulsion" in the caucus over the way a bunch of political backroom boys who most people have never even heard of – led by
Mark Arbib
, David Feeney,
Bill Shorten
and
Don Farrell
– had set about destroying a first-term Labor prime minister.

“We had to indicate she had much broader support," the source said, “because a lot of people were resisting the need to change leaders because of the plotters and the idea that, if Julia won, it would give them a head of steam."

It was a revulsion shared by many on talkback radio yesterday, and in a stream of emails and messages coming into Labor MPs offices.

“It’s huge," another source said. “They all want to know: what the f**k are you doing?"

That question will resonate in the short term to muddy an historic moment – the first time a woman has been appointed Australia’s prime minister.

Many within Labor ranks were concerned yesterday that the reaction against “such a cold-blooded political hit" might offset much of the poll bounce that Gillard’s election might otherwise give the party.

Longer term, Gillard’s elevation on the back of a panicking party, which couldn’t stomach a brief experience of bad polls, casts an inevitable pall over her government’s credibility.

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Kevin Rudd
has not faced the assassins in order to make way for a huge change in policy, but to produce a better election result, and smoother sales pitch. It is hard not to see this as inevitably leading to less politically dangerous reform.

Gillard’s first media conference yesterday was about smoothing appearances on the resources tax and reassuring voters that she “understood their discomfort" about boat people arriving on our shores.

The new Prime Minister wouldn’t clearly say whether she would be championing Labor’s emissions trading scheme at the next election.

But in the last week, as a frenzy of meetings has been taking place around Parliament House trying to settle on a new set of climate change policies to take to voters, MPs say the perception clearly emerged that it was Gillard arguing that the government couldn’t revisit the issue, or the ETS, before the election.

Rudd put on the record in the caucus yesterday that Gillard and Swan had been advocates of dumping the ETS, while Lindsay Tanner and Penny Wong had furiously opposed it. He also took full responsibility for taking the final decision. What he did not tell caucus but has repeated to other colleagues is that Arbib was at him constantly from January onwards to dump the ETS.

The irony of the fact that one of the major proponents for the dumping of the ETS has now assassinated the prime minister because of the result of that advice is astonishing, and must be particularly bitter for Rudd.

Arbib is one of a new generation of “powerbrokers" behind this coup who seem to have no respect for the traditions of one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world, nor any apparent commitment to its values.

Their only value is staying in power. The only modus operandi is to tear down leaders.

But is that any different to the party of old, in the days of “Richo" and Robert Ray and all the other colourful “key factional powerbrokers"?

Yes, it is. For a start, in the olden days it was the caucus, whatever its factional groupings, that decided who would be the ALP parliamentary leader.

This time around, Labor MPs watched appalled as the head of the Australian Workers Union,
Paul Howes
, told viewers of the ABC’s Lateline on Wednesday night that his union had switched allegiance from Rudd to Gillard and cheerfully explained why the prime minister would be losing his job.

The leadership challenge was almost over without anybody making a phone call to any MPs.

The coup occurred without the cabinet and the caucus knowing it was on and, from the public’s perspective, it was a play by the unions.

In the olden days, prime ministers were only dumped after bruising contests about changing policy direction. Powerbrokers were also trusted by their colleagues. The new ones are not.

Internal party polling – except in one infamous case – was never used by party operatives to bring down a leader before this week.

NSW politics, of course, has been very different for some time.

Rudd fingered the conspirators yesterday in the caucus room after deciding some time after 8.30am that he would not contest the ballot.

(The numbers had collapsed during the course of the night to something like 80 to 20 against him as the sense of inevitability about a change, and the need for a decisive result, was successfully incubated across the caucus.)

He told his colleagues that Labor had to be more robust in dealing with two months of bad polls and that it should not let the bad practices that had infected the NSW party infect the federal party as well.

They all knew where this led, he said, citing the fate of Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees.

Those who have advocated the change of leadership have referred to Rudd’s own leadership style as a major reason for dumping him.

But that very style reflects just as badly on the cabinet and the caucus as it did on Rudd.

The outgoing prime minister was rarely challenged, just complained about.

When he went missing in action in January after the Copenhagen debacle, for example, no one stepped into the breach. They were all too used to waiting for Kevin to do something.

Kevin Rudd ran a chaotic, overly centralised government and became, as prime minister, an often incoherent communicator. His removal will probably improve Labor’s prospects at the polls.

But the way it was achieved leaves open the question of whether it is a party that actually deserves to win. Voters ended up hating his ETS, but hating the fact he dumped it even more. They may have ended up hating Kevin, but it is not clear they approve of the way he was dumped either.